Conventionally, in the production of goods such as, for example, explosives, meat or other products, the product is fed (typically pumped) or stuffed into a casing in a manner that allows the casing to fill with a desired amount of the product. As is well-known, the casings can be a slug-type natural or artificial casing that unwinds, advances, stretches and/or pulls to form the elongate casing over the desired product. Another type of casing is a heat-sealed tubular casing formed by seaming together a thin sheet of flexible material, typically elastomeric and/or polymeric material. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,085,036 and 5,203,760 describe examples of automated substantially continuous-feed devices suitable for forming sheet material or flat roll stock into tubular film casings.
Rotating multi-clipper platform systems, such as the Rota-Clip® high speed packaging system by Tipper Tie, Apex, N.C., have been used to produce increased quantities of clipped product. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,821,485; 5,020,298; 5,259,168; 5,471,815; 5,644,896 and 8,006,463. The contents of the above referenced patents are hereby incorporated by reference as if recited in full herein.
It is well known that clippers have been configured to have clip-blow off operation to keep the clip die clean and/or to eject unwanted clip material that may remain in the die before a subsequent clip cycle. However, there remains a need to configure clippers with clip-blow off capacity that can operate in an efficient and reliable manner.